With gun control suddenly at the forefront of the American political conversation, interest groups on both sides of the debate have started to make their own claims about the state of guns and gun violence in America. So, what do the numbers really look

With gun control suddenly at the forefront of the American political conversation, interest groups on both sides of the debate have started to make their own claims about the state of guns and gun violence in America. So, what do the numbers really look like? Check below the graphic for our sources.
Mansur Gidfar
Sources

Ezra Klein. "Twelve Facts About Guns and Mass Shootings in the United States." The Washington Post. Dec. 14, 2012.

Erin G. Richardson and David Hemenway. "Homicide, Suicide, and Unintentional Firearm Fatality: Comparing the United States With Other High Income Countries, 2003." The Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care. January 2011.

Saturday December 22, 2012, 11:58 pm
The US is certainly up there in both the numbers of guns owned, and the numbers of homicides and suicides that occur. If only the US could realize that more guns means more suicides and homicides!

Sunday December 23, 2012, 7:55 am
Thanks Rebecca--that is truly the bottom line and the realities so many are choosing to be in denial about--some to the extent psychologists might even deem pathological. Sure wish I had a supply of green stars available to send to you!

Monday December 24, 2012, 12:52 am
I'm not so much against the right to bear arms (though that right was drafted a long time ago when people had homesteads to protect on desolate frontiers, and makes me believe it's a bit antiquated) but people that have no business having access to firearms being able to get them in their hands easily. I'm also against anybody(outside of the military and some law enforcement personnel) having access to high powered, military style semi automatic rifles. No ordinary citizen needs to have access to those. Nobody!

Monday December 24, 2012, 2:30 am
I an against any further gun control. The facts are that the assault rifle is used in less than2% of gun related crime. The .223 civilian or 5.56 military is a superior round fired thru a civilian barrel it is very accurate. It is the perfect single gun to use in most situations. It represents a breakthrough is design. The military style is more user friendly and has much more adaptation to changing environments. It is just plain superior.
One problem is that while many Americans are Urban there are many areas which are rural. The needs of those people are different that city dweller. People deserve the best . The best is not cheap just look up the prices! But these are the state of the art.

Monday December 24, 2012, 6:42 am
You cannot currently send a star to Robert because you have done so within the last week.
Scott, your selective facts do not actually support your conclusion--it is specious reasonaing at best.
You cannot currently send a star to David because you have done so within the last week.
You cannot currently send a star to John because you have done so within the last week.

Monday December 24, 2012, 8:04 am
We are not mature enough to have as many guns in this country as we have - we tend to fear everything, be paranoid, get angry, and want revenge. We are a violent nation that fears and distrusts anything and anyone different from ourselves. I'd like to see all guns banished at least until we grow up enough to know how to use them.

Monday December 24, 2012, 2:28 pm
Stunning. Yet the Grover Norquist of the NRA continues to defy the opinion and wishes of his own consituency in opposing ANY new gun laws. And we listen to this fool, why again? Two men, Grover Norquist and Wayne LaPierre are responsible for more hardship and bloodshed than the 313 million rest of us combined. Just why did we sign over our taxing and police powers to these two rabid men? Isn't their 15 minutes up? Like 15 years ago?

Monday December 24, 2012, 2:59 pm
Sorry - the above statement should have read - Gun control - there are two sides - I certainly don't like guns in the hands of demonic people, but I don't like tihis side either:

Monday December 24, 2012, 3:12 pm
Gene, you are right that Grover and Wayne have been undermining democracy and have had undue influence. A green star is headed your way.
Jean--the FDA updates drug information on a regular basis--especially for special populations like the elderly who are a disproportionate number of the deaths attributable to prescription drugs--sometimes because they cannot tolerate doses younger persons can and sometimes because they made mistakes in their medication management. Hospital accreditation requires all deaths, including pharmaceutical related ones be investigated. Actually--there is far more oversight and investigation of these deaths and changes to the rules to reduce them than there has been on gun deaths--which number more and have been increasing while the drug deaths are decreasing due to the efforts.

Monday December 24, 2012, 10:17 pm
Billie, do you know the odds are that your gun will harm your family instead of any intruder?

The health risk of having a gun in the home
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By Susan Perry | 12/17/12
handguns
REUTERS/Joshua Lott
The health risks of owning a gun are so established and scientifically non-controvertible that the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement in 2000 recommending that pediatricians urge parents to remove all guns from their homes.

Having a gun in your home significantly increases your risk of death — and that of your spouse and children.

And it doesn’t matter how the guns are stored or what type or how many guns you own.

If you have a gun, everybody in your home is more likely than your non-gun-owning neighbors and their families to die in a gun-related accident, suicide or homicide.

Furthermore, there is no credible evidence that having a gun in your house reduces your risk of being a victim of a crime. Nor does it reduce your risk of being injured during a home break-in.

The health risks of owning a gun are so established and scientifically non-controvertible that the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement in 2000 recommending that pediatricians urge parents to remove all guns from their homes.

Notice that the recommendation doesn’t call for parents to simply lock up their guns. It stresses that the weapons need to be taken out of the house.

Study after study has been conducted on the health risks associated with guns in the home. One of the latest was a meta-review published in 2011 by David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He examined all the scientific literature to date on the health risks and benefits of gun ownership.

What he found was sobering, to say the least.
Accidental deaths

To begin with, having a gun in the home is a risk factor for serious accidental injury and death. As Hemenway points out, death certificate data indicate that 680 Americans were killed accidentally with guns each year between 2003 and 2007. Half those victims were under the age of 25.

Children aged 5 to 14 in the United States are 11 times more likely to die from an accidental gunshot wound than children in other developed countries.

Nonfatal gun injuries occur at the average rate of 20 a day in the United States — and that doesn’t include pellet-gun injuries (which average 45 day) or injuries that don’t involve a bullet wound (like powder burns and recoil injuries).

“One study of nonfatal accidental shootings found that the majority were self- inflicted, most involved handguns, and more than one third of the injuries required hospitalization,” writes Hemenway. “Injuries often occurred during fairly routine gun handling — cleaning a gun, loading and unloading, target shooting, and so on.”
Suicides

An average of 46 Americans committed suicide with guns each day between 2003 and 2007. In fact, more Americans killed themselves with guns during those years than with all other methods combined.

Gun owners and their families are not more suicidal than non-gun-owners, research shows. No are they more likely to have a history of depression or other mental health problems.

But they — and their families — are at significantly increased risk of successfully taking their lives with a gun. The reason: Guns are more lethal than other methods.

One study found, reports Hemenway, that “in states with more guns, there were more suicides (because there were more firearm suicides), even after controlling for the percentage of the state’s population with serious mental illness, alcohol dependence or abuse, illicit substance dependence or abuse, and the percentage unemployed, living below the poverty level, and in urban areas.”

But “there was no association between gun prevalence and a state’s nonfirearm suicide rate,” he adds.
Homicides

Two-thirds of all murders between 2003 and 2007 involved guns. The average number of Americans shot and killed daily during those years was 33. Of those, one was a child (0 to 14 years), five were teenagers (15 to 19 years) and seven were young adults (20 to 24 years), on average.

Children in the U.S. get murdered with guns at a rate that is 13 times higher than that of other developed nations. For our young people aged 15 to 24, the rate is 43 times higher.

“The presence of a gun makes quarrels, disputes, assaults, and robberies more deadly. Many murders are committed in a moment of rage,” writes Hemenway.

“For example, a large percentage of homicides — and especially homicides in the home — occur during altercations over matters such as love, money, and domestic problems, involving acquaintances, neighbors, lovers, and family members; often the assailant or victim has been drinking. Only a small minority of homicides appear to be the carefully planned acts of individuals with a single-minded intention to kill. Most gun killings are indistinguishable from nonfatal gun shootings; it is just a question of the caliber of the gun, whether a vital organ is hit, and how much time passes before medical treatment arrives.”
Benefits?

The possible health benefits of gun ownership are twofold: deterring crime and stopping crimes in progress. But there are no credible studies, says Hemenway, that higher levels of gun ownership actually do these things.

“The main reason people give for having a handgun in the home is protection, typically against stranger violence,” he writes. “However, it is important to recognize that the home is a relatively safe place, especially from strangers. For example, fewer than 30% of burglaries in the United States (2003-2007) occur when someone is at home. In the 7% of burglaries when violence does occur, the burglar is more likely to be an intimate (current or former) and also more likely to be a relative or known acquaintance than a stranger. Although people typically spend most of their time at home, only 5% of all the crimes of violence perpetrated by strangers occur at home.”

In fact, adds Hemenway, research shows that most self-defense use of guns is not socially desirable. He describes one study in which “criminal court judges from across the United States read the 35 descriptions of the reported self-defense firearm uses from 2 national surveys and found that, even if description of the event was accurate, in most of the cases, the self-defense gun use was probably illegal. Many were arguments that escalated into gun use.”
Real risks

“There are real and imaginary situations when it might be beneficial to have a gun in the home,” Hemenway concludes. “For example, in the Australian film Mad Max, where survivors of the apocalypse seem to have been predominantly psychopathic male bikers, having a loaded gun would seem to be very helpful for survival, and public health experts would probably advise people in that world to obtain guns.”

“However, for most contemporary Americans, the scientific studies suggest that the health risk of a gun in the home is greater than the benefit,” he adds. “There are no credible studies that indicate otherwise.”

Hemenway’s review appeared in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine and can be read in full online.

Tuesday December 25, 2012, 5:15 am
If you are not in the Police or armed forces or in the country / on a farm where strict regulation would monitor the ownership of a gun - not assault guns - there is no reason to have any.

Tuesday December 25, 2012, 6:19 am
In the week after the Sandy Hook School massacre six hundred Americans died because of guns, over half were suicides, the rest were murders and accidents. There is a need to reappraise the role of guns in American society especially when there are states in America where you are more likely to be shot than hit by a automobile. The NRA have shown a callous and cynical approach which was obscene in their total disregards to facts but then they are in it for the money so being a bastard is just part and parcel especially when the reaction after a massacre is to buy more guns especially given that yesterday two volunteer firefighters were shot dead as they battled to put out a blaze. The second amendment argument is always used as a red herring when there are people who make an absolute fortune blanketing America with weapons and turning it into a place where there’s a constant humming fear that a nut with a gun will decide to kill you and a bunch of other people for the hell of it.

Tuesday December 25, 2012, 6:46 pm
Jean, none of those countries were democracies or democratic republics at the time they committed those atrocities. Similar atrcities have been occurring in countries with similar political structures without gun control, too--so that gun control policy cannot be viewed as the cause of the deaths.

Tuesday December 25, 2012, 8:36 pm
everyday we lose more freedoms. we are not doing to be a democracy for much longer. at that time we need to be able to fight for our country. if you don't want to have a gun and defend your rights don't. i'll keep my gun and stand up for my country when the time comes.

Tuesday December 25, 2012, 9:28 pm
Thanks for your reply Jean. Democracy and related rights may well be our best protection. Billie, more of those with guns use verbage that goes with insurrection and the dangers to our country from within than speak of using in defense of country. Those aligned with the rhetoric of gun rights have also been drafting the bills to limit our freedoms--they are not the friends of democracy.

Wednesday December 26, 2012, 5:46 am
@ Jean C.: The 'World Gun Control History' you cite is so out of context and to apply it to the United States is such a load of crap as to be laughable.

Let me know how it goes when you take your Bush Master,Glock and Sig Sauer and you go up against a T-70 Tank. The point is the Country protects itself by assuring it has a government and institutions it can trust and not allow it to fall in the hands of anti-democratic special interests like the NRA, the Koch bros, TeaParty, ultra right wing Republicans and religious nut jobs who would force their minority views on the majority and eliminate all freedom of choice.

Wednesday December 26, 2012, 9:17 am
Thank you Phil for your excellent comparative weapons analysis for Jean and others who might have done similar incomplete thinking as to believe such was logical vs. unsupported propaganda.You cannot currently send a star to Phil because you have done so within the last week.

Wednesday December 26, 2012, 3:59 pm
Noted w/thanks, J.L. So many great comments and info! Now, that the conversation has begun, despite the wishes of the NRA.....let's not let it just die off. Since the NRA has ratcheted up the conversation by pushing for guns in all schools throughout America, maybe we should just take the opposite view, (so we can meet in the middle someday?), and ask for a huge reduction in the manufacturing of guns as well as bullets--and that a huge tax be placed on both. Of course, we must exert much pressure to pass a new Assault Weapons Ban, end gun shows, stop the manufacturing of multiple clips, and funding to enforce all gun laws presently on the books. That would be a great start.

Wednesday December 26, 2012, 4:42 pm
Apparently J.L. A and Phillie Willie - you don't know anyone who has been attacked and had they been able to defend themselves, the outcome would have been different. You are so lucky that you have been able to live in that glass bubble...

Wednesday December 26, 2012, 7:27 pm
Jean, I know many where law enforcement confirmed the data that they were less injured than would have been expected had they made the mistake of carrying or having a gun where the odds would've been their death rather than any mythical protection. The data is very clear that it is no real defense except in people's imaginations.

Lois--you are right as usual and hopefully this public health problem will be addressed based on the facts instead of the propaganda fictions the NRA has been fooling the gullible into believing about how gun ownership can help instead of the reality of hurting their safety and that of whoever lives with them.

Thursday December 27, 2012, 8:15 am
And let's think for a minute....if guns weren't used to commit suicide or kill others, what other weapons would be used? Knives? Baseball bats? Poisons? Really any other blunt or sharp object in the entire world? IT IS NOT THE GUN, IT IS THE PERSON.

Thursday December 27, 2012, 8:50 am
Hayley, you are ignoring the research provided in this thread--the weapons you suggest do not usually lead to death when used and intervention preventing death is the typical outcome. Your position is one that supports death rather than life while spouting NRA propaganda funded by weapons manufacturers to enhance their profits. I feel sorry for you if you actually believe what you say because it means that you were gullible and duped by them.

Friday December 28, 2012, 2:20 pm
Scott Haakon, yes, if we are going to kill each other “state of the art” is need for maximum efficiency, clearly obvious at Sandy Hook…. More than 60% of the mass killings happen in rural areas and cities with populations of 250k or less, so clearly more assault weapons are needed for efficiency…. (Being sarcastic if anyone missed that, I hope Scott was trying to be as well.

Where state-of –the-art is really needed is in the area of background checks, to include mental health, gun owner licensing, gun owner training (before purchase), mental health treatment, and control of gun and ammunition sales.

For those that use the Oklahoma bombing as an example of not needing guns to kill, strict control were put in place for fertilizer sales.

I find it strange that so many pro-life people are also pro-gun….

No ones 2nd Amendment rights should be more important than some one else’s right to live.

Guns don’t kill people, people do. Guns just make it much easier (favorite suicide method too). So license people to own guns rather than the guns….

Friday December 28, 2012, 2:37 pm
Scott Haakon, yes, if we are going to kill each other “state of the art” is needed for maximum efficiency, clearly obvious at Sandy Hook…. More than 60% of the mass killings happen in rural areas and cities with populations of 250k or less, so clearly more assault weapons are needed for efficiency…. (Being sarcastic if anyone missed that, I hope Scott was trying to be as well).

Where state-of –the-art is really needed is in the area of background checks, to include mental health, gun owner licensing, gun owner training (before purchase), mental health treatment, and control of gun and ammunition sales.

For those that use the Oklahoma bombing as an example of not needing guns to kill, strict controls were put in place for fertilizer sales after the one bombing.

I find it strange that so many pro-life people are also pro-gun….

2nd Amendment rights should not be more important than some one else’s right to live.

Guns don’t kill people, people do. Guns just make it much easier (favorite suicide method too). So license people to own guns rather than the guns….

Friday December 28, 2012, 2:40 pm
Jean C., do you honestly believe you can compare the efforts at gun control in America with the Soviet Union, Nazis Germany, and the other countries you listed? If so, you really have very little faith in the Constitution and laws of this country, and really sell the people of America short. The only people I know of who look at life in a callous enough way for that to even remotely be possible are really strange gun “nuts.” Not just gun owners. After all, even the majority of the members of the NRA support background checks and some form of gun control.

Sunday December 30, 2012, 9:01 am
You are welcome Melania. I disagree Paul. So many SCOTUS rulings have refined our legal understanding of the 2nd Amendment in keeping with the rest of the body of the law--we just need to continue to add to the body of the law so safety does not fall through the cracks and the law provides a sufficient safety net.